


All These Rootless Branches

by everyonewasabird



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Feuilly Week, Gen, with the faintest hint of fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26948695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyonewasabird/pseuds/everyonewasabird
Summary: A few days before the June Rebellion, Enjolras finds time to walk Feuilly home.
Relationships: Enjolras & Feuilly (Les Misérables), Feuilly & Gavroche Thénardier's Little Brothers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	All These Rootless Branches

Enjolras glanced over his men, satisfied. Spirits had run high in the Musain tonight, but it only lent them focus. Come Tuesday, Lamarque's funeral would become a riot--and more, he hoped. The future was still dark to him, but he saw a shimmer in the distance, and he seemed to breathe the pure air of dawn. The drumbeat in his chest was growing louder, and the flame in his heart burned bright. He had been on his feet since the news on Friday, conferring with printers, workers, and students. He had taken the temperature of Paris and found her boiling over.

Nearby, Combeferre spoke low and fast to a couple of new recruits, steadying their nerve for what was to come. Courfeyrac, some distance off, was cheerily and volubly doing the same. Bossuet and Joly were discussing in low tones the disposition and current whereabouts of a young lady of their acquaintance--the lady in question, Enjolras knew, was a quantity of lead whose delivery had gone astray. Bossuet had pressed Grantaire into helping; Enjolras assumed Bossuet had some reason for it. Bahorel sang out a goodbye as he departed, off to reconnoiter with other groups. Prouvaire was going with him. It was Sunday night, and Enjolras was not needed anywhere before morning.

He would find time with each of them before the end: a meal or a drink, a conversation wherever a moment could be spared. They were his friends, and he could not do less. But most were students with few responsibilities outside revolutionary work. The one who occupied his thoughts was the man who had no time.

Enjolras frowned, searching. He sighted Feuilly already shrugging on his coat by the door.

He touched Combeferre's shoulder, signaling him to take charge of ending the meeting, then he hurried through the crowd. Feuilly smiled as Enjolras reached him. Enjolras followed him from the bright candlelight of the Musain outside into the dark of the hidden stairway.

"Will you have supper with me?" Enjolras asked.

Feuilly frowned in surprise, though they had dined together often before this tumultuous spring. Light from the half moon slanted down, for the stair was open to the sky. His face, usually sun-browned by this season, was pale with long hours indoors. There were exhausted shadows around his eyes. Enjolras felt a pang of worry.

"I would love to," Feuilly said. "But I haven't time."

"Then I'll walk you home--if I may."

"Home." Feuilly finished straightening his cap. "I've not been there in days. You can walk me to the atelier, though."

It was near midnight. Enjolras put on his own hat and followed Feuilly down the steps.

Feuilly remained quiet through the concealed passage. They closed the secret gate behind them and stepped into the Rue des Grés, a puzzle of gray moonlight and black shadows. All the shops were shut. They turned north towards the river, and the hum of the city grew audible again; students did not retire early. Feuilly began to explain how, when he was not at work, not liaising with workingmen, not speaking to the immigrants and refugees who would fight beside them, he spent his nights painting fans.

"Doing the same work as your days," Enjolras said. He frowned ahead at the street where light and laughter emanated from the taverns. The air was thick with fumes of smoke and wine. This late work worried him, but he had learned long ago his role in Feuilly's life was to offer friendship, never to force his help where it was not wanted. He walked at Feuilly's side in silence.

Feuilly gave him a small smile. "I can always trust you not to tell me to work less."

"I would like to."

"Would you really?"

"Tonight I would."

They reached the Seine, where the dwindling sounds of the city were drowned by the river and the creaking boats. The Petit Pont stretched ahead of them, fading into the dark of the Cité. As they crossed, Enjolras made out the dim lamps flickering from the taverns on the docks.

"It's the atelier," Feuilly said. "There's work commissioned. If I die in this fight, the burden falls on the others. Léonie and Thérèse are already in Monsieur Gilbertheau's bad graces for not working fast enough. Madame Diamantopoulou has three children at home and terrible pains in her hands. She let Joly look when I vouched for him, and he suspects arthritis."

They stepped from the bridge into the refuse-strewn maze of broken-down houses. The unhealthy air stank of mud and tides. Civilization swept its dust into corners and called itself clean; the Cité was one such corner. Hoarse voices drifted from the cheap wine shops.

Feuilly went on. "She means to hide it from the Gilbertheaus as long as she can. The more I finish--" He shrugged. Even blurred to a pale smudge by the darkness, his smile looked strained. "It's one tangible thing I can leave behind."

"Ah."

Even at his most hopeful, Enjolras could not imagine there would be no deaths. Families of people he loved would dress in black this summer, some in suits newly purchased, others in old garments re-dyed. Some of the bereaved would gaze on the coffins with the same fire in their hearts that burned in Enjolras and his men now; others would only stare, empty, unable to fathom why.

Feuilly had no family.

Almost against his will, Enjolras pictured his own parents in new-bought clothes of black wool, weeping without comprehending it. The tangible remnants of a life were the property of the family one was born into, not the family one chose. The dead would be brought away by relations and buried in accordance with their rank in the social order, if they did not manage to overthrow it. The injustice galled him. There would be a gravestone with his name if he fell. There would perhaps not be one for Feuilly.

"You change the world everywhere you go," Enjolras said quietly. "I could not number the children or the men and women you have taught to read, nor the immigrants who found homes and work and communities with your help. What begins Tuesday, what began long before it, is also a tangible thing. That is true regardless of--"

Feuilly hushed him suddenly.

The buildings crowded so close upon one another they almost touched overhead. No moonlight reached the puddled and refuse-littered pavement. Enjolras listened; it was quiet. Something brushed the skirt of his coat.

Feuilly dropped to his knees, and there was the high, thin scream of a child. Enjolras stood motionless. Feuilly spoke softly in the dark at his feet.

"Over here." Enjolras crossed to where a lamp in an upper window cast down enough light to see.

The child did not resist when Feuilly drew him over. In the flickering light he looked seven or so, dressed in dirty tatters and trembling. Feuilly handed Enjolras back his purse, which Enjolras stowed in a safer pocket. The boy sank against the wall and hugged his knees.

_"Cavale,"_ he breathed. _"Cavale, cavale."_

Enjolras recognized argot, though he did not speak it. He felt a sharp flare of indignation at civilization, at the king, and at the bourgeois who propped up that king. The hungry child was not the one at fault. To love Paris and her people was to be ever heartbroken and angry. Feuilly regarded the boy a moment, then he raised his voice.

"We won't hurt your brother. You can come out if you like."

There was a pause, then a rustling. Another child crept out, younger and smaller. He pushed past the skirt of Enjolras's coat and joined the other.

The elder put a protective arm around him and raised his chin. "What's your game?"

The boys could have run. Even to Enjolras's untrained eye, they looked new to theft. Feuilly knelt down.

"Orphans?"

"Had a mother."

"And a father," the younger whispered.

"And a home?" Feuilly asked. "That is--a _piolle?"_

The elder boy held motionless, then he shook his head.

"Don't fear," Feuilly said, "I shan't do anything. But there's better work for nimble hands. You know the workshops?"

The boy said nothing.

"Go north across the river," Feuilly said. "Cross the Pont Notre Dame and follow the Rue des Arcis to the Rue Saint-Martin. In the streets all around there, you'll see workshops. They take apprentices-- _mômes_ who work. For _larton_ every day and a _piolle_ at night. Tell them Feuilly the fan painter vouches for you. They won't all know me, but some will. Printers and fan-makers, especially. Try them."

"Feuilly?"

"Yes. The first ones you try won't say yes, don't feel bad about it. They may be closed the next few days--if you hear gunfire, keep away from it. Keep asking until one takes you."

The child wrinkled his nose. "What's a bourgeois know of it?"

"I'm not a bourgeois, I'm one of you plus a few years."

The younger contemplated Feuilly with wide eyes and his hand in his mouth. He took it out to whisper, "Like father?"

The elder narrowed his eyes. "Father wasn't as old as him."

Feuilly was twenty-six. Enjolras could not imagine how their father could be much younger. He did not interrupt.

"Hire us yourself," the boy said.

"I would, but I have to go away for a while. Just keep asking. If they take you, you'll work hard, but they'll house you. They'll give you a trade, and that will feed you now and when you're older."

"Both of us?"

Feuilly hesitated. "You, certainly. Him--"

The older boy stiffened. "Both or neither," he snapped.

"Good." Feuilly sat back on his heels, contemplating the boy's glower. "Tell them that. You have a family--keep it. And keep asking. Take this." He pressed something into the boy's hand. "Now— _cavalez!"_

The boys fled, and Feuilly got up. He and Enjolras walked on.

Enjolras reached out his hand, careful. Feuilly clasped it tight, and Enjolras felt the roughness of paint adhering to his fine, nimble fingers. Enjolras thought about a child twenty years ago, perhaps much like those he had just seen. He thought of some fan-maker who had given that child bread and work.

When Enjolras was a younger man, he had thought the only way forward was to burn the government down. He had seen enough these last years to know he had not been wrong, but he had been incomplete.

"I would take them in myself if I could," Feuilly said. "If I had time. I wanted to bring them with us, but it would go badly if Gilbertheau discovered they'd been in the shop, and my landlord keeps too close a watch. And who knows what happens after Tuesday."

"You would carry everyone's burden if you could."

"I would."

"I wish I could lighten yours."

They reached the river, a welcome breath of unconstricted air and a return to moonlight. They crossed and continued north through the deserted streets of the Marais. There was a thrill in the quiet, as if Paris were holding her breath. The spires of Saint-Merry cast black shadows over the silver-gray pavement. They continued past, up the Rue Saint-Martin.

"No," Feuilly said at last. "That is not what you want, Enjolras. You wish to illuminate the world."

"I do." Enjolras turned from the street to look at him. "But I would like to have done the other at least once."

"I don't need it."

"That's not why I offer."

Feuilly said nothing. They turned down the Rue du Grenier-Saint-Lazare, a narrow street crowded with the workshops Feuilly had described, all dark at this hour. They passed before the empty windows, and Enjolras did not speak again. Feuilly stopped at the door of the atelier, still silent.

Enjolras began to fear he had overstepped. It would not be the first time.

"I apologize if--"

"No," Feuilly said. He unlocked the door and contemplated the dark interior a moment. "That is--I'm used to working in company. There are usually half a dozen of us, and time to talk. The work takes attention, but not silence. But I can't imagine it would be interesting to sit in the shop while I paint."

"I would like to very much," Enjolras said. "If you'll allow me."

There was a silence, and he held his breath. At last, Feuilly looked up with one of his rare, sweet, unguarded smiles.

"All right," he said. "Come in."


End file.
